Now that I've been home for a few weeks, I've been asked several great questions from friends and family about daily life at the South Pole. One of the most common questions is: What did you eat?

Unlike my southern California diet of fresh fruit, fish and salads, food at the South Pole is...well, how do I put this politely, errr, not so fresh. The food and snacks that we ate Pole had to travel thousands of miles to get to us and in the process have aged, just a bit. Overall, the three warm meals prepared by the kitchen staff daily were quite delicious given the many limitations and products they were working with. Most of the meals consisted of a meat product, such as steak or chicken, a carbohydrate like rice or potatoes, and several side dishes. Fresh fruits and vegetables were available during short periods of time after a "freshie" delivery was made by the arrival of a C-130 flight from McMurdo. Freshies typically arrived every 3 weeks and were consumed very quickly!

Working outside in the cold temperatures causes the body to burn excessive amounts of calories. A typical person will burn around 5,000 calories per day and therefore, the food must be high in calories. Eventually, I became tired of having to eat so much. It literally became exhausting to have to chew so much food! I found that in the mornings, I was usually unable to consume enough food to stay warm and by an hour or two into my work shift, I was very cold and tired. I would go into the break room at the drill site and make hot chocolate and melt Oreos and Chips Ahoy cookies in it and then drink it. I know it wasn't a healthy choice, but it definitely had the calories I needed to stay warm.

Many of the snacks at Pole were many years expired. It is a common joke with people that have been on the ice about how old the food is that we eat everyday. Some of the Oreos were 9 years expired! They still tasted delicious though - they've been frozen the whole time.

Either way, the food was good enough to provide nourishment and old enough to remind me how thankful I am to eat fresh fruit and veggies everyday back here in SoCal.

I made it back to California yesterday morning. After 4 flights on 4 different planes and a combined flight time of 25 hours, I'm very happy to be home. When I left South Pole, the temperature including wind chill was -60 degrees Celsius. Here in southern California, it is currently 21 degrees Celsius (70 degrees F). I'm actually a bit too warm. My body is still adjusting to the warm temperatures, humidity, and darkness!

Here is the last picture I took at the South Pole. What a great adventure!

Stay tuned for more pictures and stories of my trip. Time to recover from the jet lag! :)

My two universities: Texas A&M where I received my Bachelor's of Science in Meteorology in 2013 (WHOOP!) and the University of California, Irvine where I am currently working on my Ph.D in Earth System Science.

One of the unique characteristics of Antarctica is that it's size changes during the seasons through the growth and melting of sea ice. Sea ice is really just want it sounds like - ice that forms on the sea. When the temperatures drop below freezing and stay that way for some time, the sea water actually freezes. In fact, the temperature must be a few degrees below freezing before the sea water begins to freeze. As anyone who have ever taken a gulp of water in at the beach knows, the ocean contains salt. For the same reason why people put salt down on sidewalks to prevent ice forming during winter, the same chemistry happens in the ocean water. As the ocean water freezes, the salt and other dissolved chemicals are left behind. This is one of the reasons why the polar ocean areas in the Arctic and Antarctic are important for the global ocean circulation. The cold, saltier water left behind from the formation of sea ice is more dense than warmer or just less saltier water and this cold, dense water sinks very deep down into the ocean. This movement of water is sometimes called the Ocean Conveyor Belt System. Everything in nature obeys the conservation of mass and energy and so more water must come to replace the water that has just been displaced. Without the formation of sea ice each winter, the global ocean circulation would slow down and this would have rather large impacts on the global climate system. This is one of the reasons why climate scientists are concerned about the demise of sea ice in the Arctic.

It is getting near the end of summer here in the Antarctic and there is still much sea ice around the continent. This sea ice is favored by seals as a nice resting location and currently the sea ice around McMurdo Station is dotted with hundreds of seals. I've only seen one lone penguin so far. Penguins need open ocean to hunt for food and usually only come around McMurdo when the sea ice has melted. This year the sea ice is still pretty solid so there has not been a whole lot of penguin activity. In fact, in order to allow the resupply vessel to reach the dock, an icebreaker ship had to lead the way to break up the sea ice. Residents said that a few days after the ice breaker cleared the way, there was quite a bit of marine activity including killer whales (orkas) and several penguins.

In the picture, you'll see a seal making their way up onto the sea ice for nice nap (or whatever seals prefer to do). In the front of the picture, toward the bottom, you'll also notice what looks likes mounds of sea ice. This feature is called a pressure ridge and is formed from the sea ice being forced up against the shoreline (or grounded land). This force causes the ice to fracture and be pushed up on itself. It's quite a beautiful feature.

Pressure ridges in the foreground and the many seals doting the sea ice in the background.